Uncharted: The Tales of Mauna Kea
by The Alpha Gray Wolf
Summary: A one-shot tale of Cassie Drake and Derek Lowell looking for a long-lost artifact in their own country and state. It is a standalone adventure but is canon to the previous Uncharted stories starring Cassie and Derek.


**Disclaimer: I only own the stuff I made up. The rest goes to the rightful owners.**

**AN: Since its the one year anniversary since I joined Fanfiction, I decided to write this short Uncharted one-shot.**

* * *

**Extended Summary: Cassie Drake and Derek Lowell go exploring in the big mountain of Mauna Kea to look for an ancient artifact.**

**Cassie Drake: The Daughter of Nathan Drake and archaeologist**

**Derek Lowell: Cassie's best friend, sidekick, and archaeologist.**

* * *

Mauna Kea, Hawaii

A branch broke under Cassie's sneaker as she climbed up the mountain on her hands and knees like a spider. Below her, Derek grabbed hold of a branch and yanked himself up, using his legs for support. They were glad to be climbing the tallest mountain in the Hawaii states in the day because there were so many branches that were starting to cut into their sides and they were hungry, tired, exhausted, but they kept on climbing up the mountain.

It was a beautiful Friday morning and were they going to spend it with their parents? No, they were in their early twenties and they want to spend the day together looking for something that could rewrite the past.

Cassie brought a specific journal for this. A purple colored leather pocket-sized journal that gave them all kinds of information on an artifact from an ancient Polynesian time. Sure, they go outta countries all the time to look for mythological objects or mythological cities, but very rarely did they get to find something that would be in their own country, let alone their own state.

"We're almost at the top," Cassie shouts below her, updating Derek on their progress. "Once we get to the peak, we could have an idea of where the cave is."

"I trust you," Derek mutters, still groggy from the exhaustion of waking up too early. "I mean, how often does one get to go on an adventure to look for Maui's fish hook?"

"Not a lot," Cassie answers dryly.

That was the last conversation either one had before they reached the top of the mountain and dug themselves a small circular hole for both of them to barely climb through. The tunnel was narrow both in height and width so only one had to go at a time and lacking any available lighting in the small cave, they had to use their flashlights.

"This is going to be epic," Cassie comments slyly as she crawls through the narrow cave. "We are going to find the fish hook that Maui used to create the Hawaiian islands."

"After finding Hawaiki on Easter Island," Derek began listing as he crawled after Cassie, flashlight beam shining on Cassie's feet. "The Peaches of Immortality in Mongolia, Ultima Thule in Iceland, and Atlantis in the Bermuda Triangle, yeah, I can definitely imagine us finding something as huge as an object that created several islands."

"How did it create the Hawaiian islands, that is the question that I am wondering."

Derek's eyes drew to Cassie's rear end, smiling widely and just itching to touch it. The only thing that prevented him from doing so was him being bitten on the left ankle through his sock by an ant. He groaned in pain, spasming suddenly and catching Cassie's attention instantly.

"You okay? You're not feeling like you're going to explode, are you?"

Derek was less than surprised to hear her voice of concern turn to a voice of mockery. But he couldn't expect more from her; that's the way they both were. It beats being a cardboard cutout. "Yeah, I feel like I'm going to explode with venom."

"Don't you mean," Cassie began, stopping intentionally to drive Derek crazy. "Se-"

"Shut up!" Derek snapped, already knowing what the last three letters of the word were. He was already embarrassed enough as it was; no need to add salt to his wound.

Cassie shut her mouth in surprise and continued slithering like a snap out of the cave and into a much wider space. With dirt on her elbows and knees, she dusts them off with each hand and shines her flashlight in front of her, moving to the side so Derek could crawl out and dust himself off. Now that they were both on their feet, they shined their lights everywhere to see if they could get a clear visual as to where they are. They were stunned to discover that they were actually standing on a wooden bridge only twelve feet wide and sixty feet across to another hole for them to crawl through. Cassie takes a peek over the edge to see lava hundreds of feet below, no indication that they were threatening to erupt. "That does not look like a hot tub."

"Hey," Derek called out to Cassie as he moved forward, a memory-jogging into his brain from Cassie's comment. "Remember that time you and I were in a hot tub together? It was so romantic, wasn't it?"

Cassie remembered that night that she spent in a hot tub with Derek...when she was eleven years old. There was nothing romantic about it and the fact that he was comparing it to lava being romantic was just repulsive in her perspective. She still humored him nevertheless. "How could I forget? It was summer, you were twelve and I was eleven and there was nothing romantic about it. I do remember, the water turning yellow around you."

"I spilled my Gatorade in the pool," Derek explained annoyingly. "It was still a romantic time, wasn't it?"

"There was nothing romantic about it," Cassie counters aggressively. "But why are you worried about that when we are about to find a fish hook that created our home states?"

Derek saw how off track he was with the whole hot tub memory. He shrugged and bowed his head. "I'm sorry, there is nothing more important than looking for a mytho object."

The two moved across the bridge, crumbs of wood breaking apart under their feet and falling into the lava pit. Cassie kept one hand out with her flashlight while keeping her other arm on her grappling hook, Derek copying her exactly. They felt the wood bridge starting to shake under their combined weight, so they picked up the pace.

At the end of the bridge, there was another narrow hole for them to crawl through and without any hesitation, Cassie let Derek snake through first. Cassie found that the second hole was much more complex and the trail was actually rising to an ascended slope. The surfaces were becoming slippery, resorting to the two young treasure hunters to use their pitons to start climbing.

Derek accidentally kicked dirt in Cassie's face and subtly apologized. But once the slope started descending, that's when they had to dig their grappling hooks into the ground just to make sure they wouldn't slide forward.

But with their luck, the ground broke beneath the grappling hooks and they both went sliding like a bobsled on their stomachs down the hill. The speed at which they were going at was starting to rip their shirts and burn their stomachs in the first degree. The two tried using their hands to try and slow down their sliding, but their forearms only ended up with more burns than their stomachs.

Derek slides out the existing hole of the cave and flies forward several feet. He lands splat on his face on another wooden bridge. His entire body went numb as he couldn't feel Cassie falling on his back and crush him. Cassie accidentally planted her knee into Derek's back, but he did not seem to feel any pain. It was almost if his body was confused on what kind of pain he was supposed to feel. She, on the other hand, was feeling fine with only small volumes of pain presenting within her body. She dusts herself off and flips Derek over on his back. His face was bruised and his eyes were closed.

"Hey Jimmy John, are you awake?" She lightly slaps him across the face, making sure to be as gentle as possible because his left cheek was red. She takes out her canteen of water and pours a quarter ounce on his red cheek. Like being electrocuted, his eyes shot open and he jumped to a sitting position. Cassie was satisfied with her results and patted him on the back, putting her canteen back around her belt loop after taking a sip for herself. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Derek wipes the water off his cheek and around his face, waking him up instantly. "I think that was a little more of a roller coaster ride than I was expecting."

As predicted, Cassie said, "That's what she said." It did earn a chuckle of amusement from the young man. "Where are we now?" He holds a hand out for Cassie to grab and pull him up. "Are we in like another chamber or something?"

Cassie scanned and found that the bridge they were standing on was part of a larger collection of wooden bridges. There was a lot more lava down below and the wooden bridge did not lead to another hole for them to crawl through. Four wooden bridges into different locations all leading to the center of the room like a big X. In the center of the bridges though, was a pedestal with nothing on top. "What is this supposed to be some kind of ancient test?"

Derek glared at Cassie with an are-you-serious look. "Of course it is, Cass," he mocks. "What else could it be?"

"But what about the pedestal?" Cassie points out. "Unless the pedestal is part of this whole ancient trial that we have to do."

"Look down there," Derek points below the bridge on the opposite side to see a hook hanging off one of the edges of the bridge. "Is that the fish hook that we came for?"

Cassie squints through her contacts and sees a steel blade in the shape of a P hanging off the edge of the opposite bridge. "That could be the fish hook, or something else." She takes out the purple journal from her back pocket and flips to a page with a drawing of the fish hook. "Look, the old man who gave us this journal said that the fish hook looks exactly like this fish hook drawn here."

"And you really trust a senile old man?" Derek compared the fish hook he was physically seeing and the drawing.

"In case you've forgotten," she smiles at Derek, slapping the journal shut with a loud thud. "The old senile man that gave us this, said that he was a direct descendant of one of the ancient Polynesians themselves. He would be the only person on Hawaii who would have access to secrets like this. Why he gave me this, maybe it was time for history to be rewritten. But either way, that old senile man is a primary source that leads us here to a cave inside a dormant volcano that nobody knew about. I am not trusting that senile old man because he is senile and old, I am trusting him because he is a direct descendant of the Polynesians." She handed the journal to Derek to let him examine it for himself. "We actually get a chance to see a mythic object that created our homes." She then said something else, which was: "And our plane tickets here were cheap."

"I was actually expecting something more," he complained slightly disappointed after seeing that the Maui fish hook looked exactly like it did in the journal. "But I guess you can expect something big when you wrap your own present. Let's go get it."

Before they went, Cassie noticed that the center of the bridges was being supported by a giant wooden beam that stretched all the way down to the pit of lava, not burning despite being wood.

Cassie parkours over the pedestal and onto the wooden bridge with the fish hook. Instantly, her heart started beating due to the fact that she just found an object that people long believed to be a myth. Not anymore. Derek stays near the pedestal just in case while Cassie goes to retrieve the fish hook.

She kneels down when her foot is near the fish hook, and grasps the hard steel blade with her fingers, almost cutting herself in the process. She rubs her fingers over the fish hook to see if she could find the grip. Her fingertips grazed over a wooden material that was even softer than the wood she was kneeling on. She wraps her hands around the handle and with both hands, tries yanking to free the fish hook from its position.

Derek watched from the pedestal with eagerness, waiting excitedly to see Maui's fish hook. He licked his lips with anticipation and took a step forward to the bridge. "You got it?" he asked upon witnessing Cassie struggle to free the fish hook. "Do you need any help?"

"I got it," Cassie reassured. Just as the fish hook budged, the wooden bridge shook, throwing Cassie off her balance, causing her to let go and land on her side. "What the hell?" She dusts herself off and looks to see the wooden bridge start to crack, somehow affected by the attempted removal of the fish hook. "Oh, crap."

"Come on," Derek rushed her. "Let's go."

Cassie leaps forward, reaching for Derek's extended arms, but the bridge already gave away.

The bridge split at the halfway point and went falling into the pit of lava. However, the half of the bridge that Cassie was clinging to was dangling off the center of the bridges. Cassie barely had any time to jam her piton into the dangling bridge and hold on by one hand. Derek was hysterical that Cassie may have finally met her end, but was relieved to see her dangling off the end of the torn in half bridge. The wooden bridge itself, however, was about to fall off like a sticker on the wall. Derek took out his grappling hook, tied the rope around his waist and threw the hook down to Cassie.

Cassie felt the hook brush off her scalp and she ignored it. She was climbing down the bridge to grab the fish hook, which was still lodged deep into where it originally was. "Hey Derek," she calls out above her, keeping her eyes on the fish hook. "I'm going to reach for the fish hook, pull me up when I say."

"Okay," Derek complies. "Just say when."

Before she does anything else, she holds onto the piton with one hand and uses the other hand to grab the bladed part of the grappling hook and stab it under her belt. "Derek, I'm about to go dangling, be ready."

"I can handle your weight." He thrusts his shoes into the ground like a bull. He feels a sudden increase of weight on the rope around his waist, off the bat knowing that Cassie was dangling.

Cassie swings from left to right, attempting to put her piton away before she asks Derek to lower herself slightly so she could meet the fish hook's level. He complies and takes two or three steps forward towards the edge to meet Cassie's request, leaning back to keep his center of gravity.

Cassie's face was only inches away from the big fishing hook and she marveled the artifact like a curious little girl. Never before has she thought of seeing _the_ fishing hook that created Hawaii. The whole experience brought a smile to her face, which was only short-lived because the dangling bridge was starting to give way. "Oh crap, why do all the awesome moments have to get cut short?" She grips the handle and with all her strength, yanks the fishing hook out of the wood like a machete. Now that she was _out of the woods_, she marveled the artifact every square inch, studying it, trying to get as many details as possible.

The pain was starting to settle in Derek's waist area, almost like he was going to be torn in half. The painful, horrible realization was that Cassie was too heavy for him which was considered odd because he has always been able to support her weight. He lost his footing and went sliding forward almost, barely stopping in time when he was at the edge. Cassie nearly screamed as she felt a few feet only to be jerked back up to a stop.

"Crap, I must be too heavy for Derek," she mutters. "Or maybe, this fish hook is somehow adding weight…"

Cassie hurls the fishing hook up onto the center of the bridges and starts climbing back up without a second thought. For Derek, the weight suddenly became manageable and less painful. Blindly, he walked backward and far away from the edge, his waist feeling like there was no pain at all. Cassie was almost back on the center of the bridges. She put her foot on the loose part of the bridge to jump back onto the center, but the bridge gave way under her weight and she went falling, dragging an unexpected Derek with.

Cassie ripped her own grappling hook from her belt and threw the hook part to the pillar under the center of the bridge that ran from the lava pit up to them. The hook lodges deep into the pillar and Cassie swings towards it so suddenly, crushing her body into it painfully. Derek's grip around the grappling hook still attached to Cassie's waist as he fell was something of unmatchable strength. The grappling hook around Cassie's own waist prevented Derek from falling and only caused him to hit the pillar as well. His weight was much more than Cassie's so in order to compensate so he wouldn't pull them both down, he stabbed his own piton into the pillar and pushed his hands and feet into handholds and footholds so _he_ could hold his own weight. Cassie did the same above him and neither one was carrying either's weight, despite both having a single rope to connect them.

"You okay down there?" Cassie asks her voice echoing off the walls.

"I hit my chest," Derek responded that he too was okay and that they should worry about getting out of here than anything else.

"This is what we are going to do," Cassie plans to Derek. "I am going to climb to the top while you climb to my grappling hook to free me. After that, once I am at the top, I will help guide you up."

"Sounds good," Derek says flatly. "But the handholds are loose and we can easily lose our footing."

"If it comes to that, if you feel like you are going to fall down there, just yank your rope twice and I will support your balance until you find a handhold. If that happens to me, I will just jam my piton in the ground."

Now they started climbing up the pillar. Some of the handholds felt loose and unsteady and whenever that happened, one would stop to jam their piton in the wall until they found a good handhold to cling onto, while the other would wait. Other times, one would feel like they were going to fall and have the person above them hold their rope until they found a new handhold.

But with their combined cooperation, they were able to successfully reach their objectives without a scratch on either of them. Cassie climbed back on top with Derek staying behind to free her grappling hook, then Cassie pulled him up to the top. They then patted each other on the back after that.

"That was a wild experience," Cassie comments jokingly. "How about you?"

Derek returned the gesture of patting Cassie on the back harder than she did to him. "That was definitely something worth my adrenaline pumping." He looked to the ground to see the fish hook.

"That is the thing that almost killed us." Derek heard Cassie said.

"What do you mean, Cass?"

"The minute I grabbed that fish hook, my own weight increased which would explain why the bridge gave away when I stomped on it and why it was much easier to climb when I was no longer holding the object."

Cassie and Derek move towards the object, each taking one of their own hands to pick up the device, finding it to be voluminously heavy. Their back was straining so they quickly put the fish hook back on the pedestal where it initially started off from before they got there and decided to study it there. "What the hell is this thing?" Derek studies the object hard. "This thing was just about to be the death of us, which only makes me more curious about it."

"Let's see what our descendant friend has to say about it." Cassie whips out the journal and scrolls through several pages on Maui's fish hook. The first thing that catches her attention and raises an eyebrow, she reads to Derek. "Check this out."

_They say that only true Polynesians can hold Maui's fishhook but this is wrong. The fishhook itself is not heavy, but highly magnetic, acting as a modern day compass except it is aiming for a powerful magnetic force in the ground rather than at the north pole. If one plans to move it, then it is suggested using another magnetic force to counteracts the effects of the magnetic itself or it will prove to be heavy to travel with._

Derek was slightly disappointed, but he accepted that the Maui's fish hook was just superhumanly scientific, not supernatural. "I guess that makes sense. And plus, it gives us a good idea on what this thing is and how we can understand it more."

"So we can counteract the effects of the magnet with a magnet. Can't believe it was that simple D-Man."

"It all does make sense," Derek points out. "When one magnet meets another, their electromagnetic force compels them, pushes them in a different direction. So if we had a magnet on us, then we could control the fishhook and manipulate its weight. If we had a big magnet on us to use against the fishhook, but where in the hell are we going to find a big magnet for this fishhook? This thing is like three feet tall." The fishhook suddenly shifts forward a little and flies towards Cassie's belt buckle abruptly, catching her off guard and hurting her groin badly. "Damn it," she curses, folding over and clutching her stomach rather than her groin. Derek grabs the fishhook from his friend's belt buckle and rips it from her belt. The fishhook went flying downwards into the ground, digging into the toes of his shoes.

"Oh crap," Derek exclaims as the hook end stabs into his shoes, barely missing any part of his foot by half an inch. He snatched the fish hook back up with ease and put it to his own belt buckle. "I think for now until we find a magnet to hold it, I will keep it as my belt buckle."

"It's going to be difficult climbing down with that fish hook at your groin," she warns. "You sure you're up for it, Candyman?"

"Sure am," he answers with confidence before he turns to a joke. "I will gut you from your groin to your sternum. I'm sure that I can _hold_ it on my belt, not _climb _with it," he clarifies. He amused himself with the Candyman reference, but that movie was old; it was the 2030s and that movie came out like forty-something years ago. It's a miracle they remember the movie.

"Okay then, now let's find a way out of here." She leads the way to look for another way out of the mountain. The bridge they fell on collapsed into the lava pit when they were trying to climb back up, so they had to look for a different way out of the temple. With only two bridges left, they climbed across one, which only proceeded to collapse into the lava pit as well. That left them only one last bridge before they would be trapped in here. This time, they took it with caution.

Cassie sprinted across the bridge, takes out her piton and jams it into the wall and hangs on for dear life as the bridge collapses once again. One hand on the piton and the other hand on a handhold, she glues her feet to the wall and looks over her shoulder at Derek. "Well, so much for throwing caution to the wind." She succeeded in making Derek chuckle. "I really have no idea what to do here, D-Man." She looked to her left for an opening to crawl through, then her right. All results were no holes. Down below, the same, but above her, just twenty feet above her, a hole in the wall with blue light coming from it.

Derek spotted the same thing that she did and shouted, "You can climb through there and then I can swing across somehow!"

"That's what I was thinking man," she replies. "You're my wingman; I can't see any handholds above me so you're gonna have to point them out to me."

"No problemo." He then barely spots two handholds for Cassie to climb above her head. "There's two of them right above your head actually."

Cassie climbed the wall with her piton, Derek help guiding her to the hole with the blue light. Once she crawled into the hole, she saw that the blue light was coming from a torch at the far end of the hole with beautiful blue fire. She has not seen blue fire since the movie, _Hellboy_ or that last segment of _Fantasia_, or the time her father lit up resin.

Sitting on her knees, she tells Derek to swing his grappling hook over to her so he could help him swing over. _The weight of the fish hook is going to drag me down, but I will tough through it._

Derek does as he complies like a good boy and swings his grappling hook out for her to catch. The result was Cassie caught the bladed ended and wrapped the hook around a boulder beside her with the rope around her waist so it would be easier for Derek to climb. With ease and with a flick of his wrist, he is able to swing over to the rock wall, but the most difficult part was climbing up the wall with the sharp part of the fishhook poking into his sides.

She heard Derek mutter a curse under his breath and it amused her slightly.

"You're almost up here buddy," she reassures him. "Just a couple more feet and you should be golden."

Derek gripped the ledge that Cassie's foot was near and was assisted in yanking himself up. He lays down on his side and sighs from exhaustion, the fish hook trying to kill him from climbing up. Since there was still no kind of magnet within their reach for them to use, Derek had the most difficult crawling because the fish hook continued to weight him down.

"There's a torch with blue light at the end of this little tunnel," Cassie alerts Derek. "We'll crawl in that direction and see why the flame is blue." As she crawls on her hands and knees, she stops just several feet away from the blue torch to take out her journal. Derek halts to see what Cassie has to say (if any) about the blue torch.

The only colored page in the entire book was the page about the blue flames. It reads…

_Some would think that as the fish hook, the blue flames are supernatural. This is also inaccurate. They are not supernatural, but the chemical components are not something that has been added on the Periodic table. Even if it was on the Periodic table, there would be no name for it because no one knows where the blue flames come from. There is something within the blue flames that act as an anti-magnet. This is so far the only known type of component in the world that can actually compel the strong magnetic forces of Maui's fish hook and render them useless practically. But warning, the blue flames are extremely dangerous and have the capabilities of highly corrosive acid. If you so much as touch the flame, then the insides of your body will be burned out before the outside of your body will be._

"Talk about inside-out," Cassie jokes lightly with a scoff. She puts the journal in her back pocket and turns to Derek with a gaze of caution."So we have to be very careful when we grab that torch."

"Of course," Derek begins sarcastically. "The last thing I would want is for my skin to melt. Since Maui's fish hook is stuck to my belt, you have to grab the flames."

"No problem," she somewhat shrugs. "I'll just take the torch and slither on forward like a snake." Without any more words being exchanged between the two, she grabs the torch very carefully and removes it from the wall. She used the blue torch as a makeshift light. There was an opening to the right of the torch that Cassie crawled through. "I hope these flames don't go out," she mutters. "How's the fishhook doing?"

"Feels good." He removes the object from his belt buckle and holds it up with ease, feeling the weightlessness of the artifact. "This feels a lot easier to carry."

"That's excellent," she praises. "Now we seriously gotta get out of here before the flames go out or we get trapped in here and _become_ history.

The whole entire tunnel illuminated with the blue light, giving them a good sense of vision front and back. The only hole they seemed like they could crawl through was through one on the ceiling. Once Cassie was under the hole in the ceiling, she flips onto her back, mindful to make sure that the flames would not touch her and sits up to look through the hole. All there was on the surface was another room, but there was a big door overgrown with nature. Cassie sets the torch aside and pulls herself out of the ground. As soon as her left foot stomped onto the ground, something gripped the back of her hair painfully and flung her across the room, smacking face-first into the wall.

Cassie clutched her bleeding nose and looked behind her, the source of the attack illuminated in the blue light. A seven-foot tall figure with no clothes on save for animal skin around the waist, the human skin he had was decorated with war paint. The face of the figure had white make covering his face, black around the eyes, and red blood around the mouth area. The figure itself was extremely muscular and looked like he could break Cassie's back with one twist if he wanted to.

"Oh crap, where did you go from? A wrestling league?" Suddenly, Cassie recognized what this being was. This being was the Guardian of Maui's Fish Hook. According to her journal, the only thing that is genuinely supernatural about anything in this mountain was the Guardian for he was born five hundred years ago to a family of fifty-five and each of them was guardians. Now it appears that there is only one guardian left, aged five hundred years old. Cassie forgot what happened to the other fifty-four guardians.

"Hey, there big guy? You eat steroids for breakfast?" She rubbed the blood off her nose and punched the Guardian in the stomach. She instantly regretted it as her knuckle swelled up. The guardian shoved Cassie back and reached down in the hole to grab Derek by the throat and force him out of the cave.

Lying on his back, Derek stabs the Guardian in the foot with the fish hook that he swore to protect and rolls away, rubbing his swollen neck from being choked.

Knowing that they were going to have to fight the Guardian instead of running as there did not appear to be any exits aside from that door, Cassie yanks Derek by his shoulders and tells him to prepare to fight.

"Let's dance, Big Tiny," she mocked. "Let us see if you are a gentle giant."

The Guardian grabbed the fish hook and ripped it from his calf. He brandished it in front of the two adventurers and used it as a weapon. Cassie and Derek attack the Guardian, each one regretting not bringing any weapons with them. Cassie focused her punches on the Guardian's face while Derek was going for his groin area. They were both extremely wary to not get stabbed by the fish hook.

The Guardian, who was tackled by Cassie, backhanded Derek. The Guardian was caught off guard and he went tumbling back and crashing into the wall behind him. Cassie was really short compared to the Guardian, but she could still put a fight and was much more agile than the monster. The Guardian retaliates against Cassie by grabbing her by the throat and putting the blade to the edge of her belly. He prepares to gut her like a fish but was interrupted by Derek when he stabbed the Guardian in the left side of his chest with the torch. The Guardian grunted in pain and dropped the fish hook. Cassie snatched the fish hook away and swings it into the right side of the Guardian's chest.

The Guardian kicked Cassie back and punched Derek across the jaw. Even with them pushed away, they still came after him. Cassie wall ran onto his back with Derek butting the Guardian in the groin area and striking him there with a large rock. On the Guardian's shoulder, Cassie hammers her elbow like a jackhammer into the Guardian's skull before he backed into the wall again and crushing Cassie against his weight.

The wind was blown out of Cassie and she lost all the strength inside of her and feel like a sack of potatoes to the side. Derek was kneed in the face and went flying high into the air before colliding his back against the rocky ground. All the air within him was exhaled like a balloon.

The Guardian standing above them was still struggling. The fish hook and torch were still stabbed within him and suddenly, sweat was falling from his forehead. He rubbed his hand over his painted forehead and gazed at his own sweat and war paint. He then feels another substance dripping down his forehead and between his eyes. He rubs his fingertips against the substance on his skin and studies it.

_Blood…_

He collapsed to one knee in pain, ripping the hook from his right chest, may have torn his lung in the process and let it fall to the ground. He took both hands and grabbed the torch on the left section of his chest. His strength was depleting. He could feel himself becoming more and weaker as he tempted to pull the torch of blue flame out.

Fighting through the pain, Cassie takes deep breaths as she crawls over to the fish hook, retrieves it and moves over to the wounded Guardian, the torch still in his chest. Sitting up behind the Guardian, she reels his hand back with the hook in it and slashes the Guardian in the nape, proceeding to rip it out and cause a huge hole in his neck to form and leak gallons of blood out.

The flames of the blue torch were starting to take effect on the Guardian. He was twitching pain and threw up blood dyed blue. His health was declining at such a massive degree.

"Eat that, you asshole," Cassie smirks as she places one foot flat on the ground and pushes herself to a stand. "Derek?" She checks on him, smiling gratefully at him that he was getting up and breathing fine. "Glad to see you're okay."

"Bow do you know that I am okay?" Derek mocks with a malice smile. "You didn't even ask if I was all right."

Cassie shakes her head in annoyance before she replies, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." He slaps Cassie on the back of the shoulder playfully. He notices the fish hook in her hand. "I see you've got what we came for."

The Guardian in front of them presses its back to the overgrown door as he started melting and bleeding out. The organs inside the monster were melting at a rapid rate and he had only his heart left as his sole organ. The skin was falling from the creature's bones like a candle. Cassie was unable to look at the cringing sight and turned away. Derek barely had the guts to look at the melting beast.

The overgrown wooden door behind the giant was melting a hole where the Guardian was leaning against and slowly, the monster began sinking into the door. He was leaning over a forty-five-degree angle before falling through the door completely and landing on a set of stairs made of rocks.

"Look," Derek calls to Cassie and the two rush over to look out the hole.

Behind the overgrown door was nothing but a set of stairs that lead down and an even bigger lava pit. They watched the melting monster fall over the edge of the stairs and into the pit of lava. They scurried through the seven-foot hole in the door and climb halfway down the stairs to get a better looking of the bubbling lava.

The monster was still alive and jumped to the surface of the lava-like he hadn't had any fresh air. The skin melted a whole lot faster than before and he was nothing more than a bony flesh of muscles. Despite being in pain, the Guardian did not scream out in agony as he sank back into the lava pit slowly, his life finally being obliterated and nothing more than a liquid form of its former self.

Cassie took the sight in her gut and almost threw up in the lava. "Now I know why the fifty-five Guardians were cut down to one. They took a swim in the lava pit."

"Why would they do that?" Derek inquires as he starts walking down the set of stairs.

"Sacrifice. Overpopulation in the mountain needed to cut down on resources. Sometimes the best answer is the simplest answer."

The fish hook in her hand suddenly started feeling heavy again without the blue flames. But since they were already going down, it was slightly easier to carry the fish hook, yet she was curious as to where these stairs lead.

"Look down there!" He points for Cassie. "Sunlight, we can finally get out of this mountain with Maui's fish hook."

"We are going to find a great place to put this when we get back to Maui itself," she chuckles as she starts walking down, the heat getting more intense from the lava as the two descend. "We'll cave-in all the entrances once we are out of here. Lost places are supposed to stay lost."

"But there is still one thing that doesn't get me?" Derek said with interest. "How did that thing create the Hawaiian islands?"

Cassie already had a simple, yet complex answer. She took the fish hook in her hand and stared at it with wonder and awe. "As I said, the best answer is sometimes the simplest answer."

"And...what would that be?"

"Maui created a super powerful magnet in the shape of a fish hook, used its strong magnetic forces to pull islands like Oahu, Honolulu, and brought them together in the same vicinity. He did the same to other Polynesian islands like Tahiti, or even the North Island. One theory I have that I find to be very unlikely, but find to be extremely amusing, is that Maui's fish hook is what caused Pangaea to break apart."

"What?"

"Like I said, unlikely, but very fun to think of."

The End of Chapter 6

* * *

**If you want to see an Uncharted adaption of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," vote on my profile page.**


End file.
